


No Sea So Wide

by Atalan



Series: Easy as Falling [2]
Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M, Romance, Transformers as Humans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-04-19 13:42:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4748504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atalan/pseuds/Atalan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skyfire still has to go, no matter how in love with Silverbolt he has finally admitted himself to be. (Humanfic) (Sequel to "Easy as Falling".)</p><p> </p><p>  <i>"No sea so wide nor wild nor blue / Could stop me sailing back to you"</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sort-of series of scenes filling in the time between "Easy as Falling" and "No Sort of Ceremony". Will have multiple parts. Hope you like some angst with your fluff!

By the time they woke up, sunlight was streaming around the edges of the blinds.

"... time is it?" Silverbolt mumbled when Skyfire lifted himself up on one elbow to look at the clock.

"Past ten."

"Really?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"I never sleep that late."

"Me neither." Skyfire settled back down, very conscious of Silverbolt's warm and sleepy weight pinning his arm, and of how reluctant he felt to jump up and go into his lab. "I think I'm taking the day off."

Silverbolt opened his eyes and blinked at him in endearing confusion.

"You are?"

"Yes. Air Raid had a point."

"He did?" Now Silverbolt looked totally bemused. "Air Raid did?"

"He did." Skyfire rolled Silverbolt towards him and kissed him slowly, utterly conquered by the contented drowsiness in his eyes. "You weren't planning on going anywhere, were you?"

Silverbolt wound his arms possessively around Skyfire and turned his head to nibble lazily on one ear.

"I think I've got a few hours before the others scrape themselves off the floor and come looking for me..."

"Good." Skyfire's hands began to wander, entirely of their own accord, earning a little intake of breath from Silverbolt. "Didn't you say something last night about doing things 'properly'?"

"Oh god _yes_ ," breathed Silverbolt so fervently that Skyfire would have laughed, if he hadn't had better things to do with his mouth.

*

To start with they were all too busy – finding the aspirin, swallowing the aspirin, vomiting the aspirin back up (in Air Raid's case), and lying very still waiting for it to work – to notice that Silverbolt wasn't around.

It was only when Skydive bravely volunteered to go and have a look in the kitchen and see if it had survived in a better state than the living area (which wasn't _completely_ wrecked, though someone was going to have an entertaining time later scrubbing the mysterious bright blue stains off the ceiling) that they realised what was different about this hangover.

There was no Silverbolt tidying up around them; no Silverbolt doling out glasses of water; no Silverbolt making them breakfast with as much sympathy as head-shaking. Slingshot dragged himself over to bang on Silverbolt's door a couple of times (half-heartedly, but loud enough to get groans of protest from the others) but there was no response.

"He did come _back_ , didn't he?" said Air Raid after a moment.

"I dunno." Slingshot flopped back onto Fireflight's couch; Fireflight lifted the quilt to let him under. "Maybe he stayed over with Skyfire."

"Doubt it," Fireflight mumbled. "He hates Skyfire's couch, it's really uncomfortable. Hey, watch your elbow!"

"Move over, then."

"Maybe he didn't sleep on the _couch_ ," Air Raid began thoughtfully. "I mean, you saw how they were last night..."

"They were exactly like they were every other night," Skydive put in, emerging from the kitchen accompanied by the smell of brewing coffee. "Are they driving anyone else up the wall, by the way?"

There was a show of hands (rather wobbly) from the three on the sofas.

"Can I lock them in a closet together yet?" Air Raid asked plaintively.

"No."

"Aw c'mon, plans A through F haven't worked..."

"Yes, but the closet is at least plan W, okay?"

"At the rate they're going," Slingshot put in sourly, "we'll be on plan W before next--"

He broke off as the main door beeped and swished open, and they all craned to look. 

Silverbolt blinked in the dim light, looked around him, and said, "Well, it's not as bad as I was expecting."

"Where've _you_ been?" demanded Slingshot.

"Are you okay?" asked Fireflight anxiously.

"Would you like some coffee?" put in Skydive.

"Please." Silverbolt walked over to the blinds and drew them up, ignoring the howls of protest. "What happened to the ceiling?"

"Sideswipe, I think. But are you--" began Fireflight, and then stopped, because Slingshot's elbow had once more made contact with his ribs, this time in a more directed way.

Because now there was more light in the room, they could see that Silverbolt was wearing the same clothes he'd been in last night, except that the shirt was quite definitely not his own, and that even though his damp hair implied he'd showered, he looked distinctly... ruffled. Not to mention that he seemed barely able to hold still, or look any of them in the eye...

"Do you need anything?" Silverbolt was saying. "Air Raid, you look awful."

"Yeah, yeah, I know," mumbled Air Raid, but even without the tip-off from Slingshot's elbow, he was eyeing Silverbolt shrewdly and with the beginning of a disbelieving grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Just where _have_ you been all night?"

"Um..."

And the way Silverbolt flushed and tried not to smile and hastily turned to start stacking up some of the glasses on the table told them more than anything he could have said.

"No way," said Fireflight, sitting up sharply and then regretting it as his head spun.

"What did you do, tie him to the bed so he couldn't run for it?" asked Slingshot, immediately curling into the warm space Fireflight had left. 

"Of _course_ not, he--" Silverbolt started sharply, then stopped himself. "We... talked."

"Uh-huh." Skydive disappeared back into the kitchen. "Sure you did."

"We did!"

"I didn't know _talking_ involved leaving marks like that on your neck."

Silverbolt raised his hand self-consciously to cover said marks, turning even redder as he did so. Slingshot and Air Raid sniggered, while Fireflight, despite his headache, found it in him to beam happily.

"I'm so glad!"

"I..." Silverbolt seemed to admit defeat, smiled ruefully. "Thanks."

"So," began Air Raid with a grin that was only made slightly less wicked by his pallor, "was the sex worth the wait?"

_"Air Raid!"_

*

Skyfire wasn't sure how he'd expected the other Aerials to react, partly because he'd been in denial for so long he hadn't had a chance to entertain any speculation on a future that including dating Silverbolt. If anything, he'd thought... he'd wondered if they could see as clearly as he could that he wasn't really good enough for their teammate.

But gestalts were weird, and the Aerials were weirder, and Skyfire supposed, in the scheme of things, getting a homemade card from Slingshot and Air Raid reading “THANK YOU FOR FINALLY SHAGGING OUR BROTHER (p.s. seriously what took you so long?)” was a minor discomfort.

He didn't show Silverbolt, for fear it might actually drive him to the mass murder he'd occasionally threatened on difficult days. The five of them weren't related by blood, but they had never been apart since they'd been chosen for the gestalt programme as children. They acted like brothers, and thought of themselves as brothers, and so Skyfire supposed that some minor tormenting of their brother's new boyfriend was only to be expected.

In an odd sort of way it was flattering. That didn't stop him hacking their entertainment network accounts and setting the adult content restrictions so high they could only watch brightly-coloured shows about the alphabet until they came and asked him nicely to fix it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Skyfire and Silverbolt circumvent approximately 90,000 words of equivalent relationship development in "A Wing and a Prayer" by just having a goddamn conversation like adults.

"How's it looking?"

"Good so far." 

Skyfire was in the pilot seat of the Valkyrie deep space shuttle he'd be taking out beyond the solar system in just a couple of weeks. Silverbolt's stomach turned slightly seeing him there. He almost wished the shuttle's operational checks wouldn't come up green, except that the thought of Skyfire heading out in a defective ship made him feel even worse than the thought of Skyfire heading out at all.

At the same time, he had to smile a bit seeing Skyfire so absorbed, comfortable in the pilot's seat. Space flight was few and far between since the start of the war, and although Skyfire's piloting skills were just as superb in atmosphere, Silverbolt knew he missed being out with the stars.

Not for the first time, a part of him wished desperately that he could have made a case for going with Skyfire on this voyage. But that would have meant leaving the others behind, and though Silverbolt sometimes wished he _could_ get away from his brothers for a while, it was hard to imagine six months in deep space without them.

It was hard to imagine six months without Skyfire, either. He swallowed, watching Skyfire's hands on the console.

"How much longer do you think it will take?"

"I'm pretty much done, actually." Skyfire looked over his shoulder questioningly. "Why?"

Rather than answer in words, Silverbolt reached over and hit the switch that blacked out the cockpit windows. He'd already made sure the door was locked behind him. Skyfire's eyebrows went up. "What are you--"

"What do you think?" Silverbolt swung around the pilot seat and into Skyfire's lap with what he hoped was smooth confidence. He was still working on this whole seduction thing, although it seemed to have been wildly successful so far. "I thought you might like something to think of when you're sitting here in space..."

It was cheesy as hell, but Skyfire's breath caught, and he grabbed onto Silverbolt's flight suit with eager hands even as he laughed.

"Have you been watching bad porn? Has Air Raid been showing you bad porn?"

"Why does Air Raid get all the credit for this stuff?" Silverbolt complained. Then, before Skyfire could reply, "Shut up and kiss me."

"Yes, sir," said Skyfire, and _that_ produced an interesting variety of responses in Silverbolt, most of which could be summed up as _hell yes, I_ like _that._

He filed it away for further consideration at some point when he wasn't preoccupied with getting Skyfire out of his flight suit as quickly as possible.

* * *

It was all so good, so perfect. Time was speeding past faster than it had any right to, when Skyfire wanted to capture every second of it and play over and over again. Silverbolt was everything he'd ever wanted and more, and for the first time in three years he only thought of Starscream when his name came up on a briefing, and god help him, he was _happy_.

So of course he fucked it up.

* * *

Silverbolt slammed the book down on the table hard enough that he almost made himself jump. Skyfire jerked around to face him, startled, but Silverbolt was too angry to feel guilty.

"If you start one more sentence with 'I'll understand if'," he bit out, "I _will_ break up with you."

It was a nonsensical threat, of course, when the whole point was that he _wasn't_ planning to break up with Skyfire – not ever, if he had his way – but he couldn't stand the way Skyfire kept trying to give him a free pass he didn't want.

"It's a long time," Skyfire said after a moment, very carefully. "I don't want you to have to..."

"What? Keep it in my pants for six months? Do you really think that's--"

"No!" There was an edge of anger in Skyfire's voice now, and Silverbolt was almost glad. "You know that's not what I mean! I just want to be fair to you--"

"Then why don't you try letting me make my own decisions?"

"Isn't it my decision too?"

Silverbolt's breath caught painfully in his throat. He had to swallow hard before he could speak, and his voice wasn't quite steady when he did.

"You can decide you don't want to be with me," he said. "If you don't-- I mean, if it's what _you_ want..."

Skyfire's expression slid from angry to horrified. "That's not what I--"

"But you don't get to decide what _I_ want," Silverbolt went on desperately. "Okay? If, if you don't want to do this, if you would rather we just... ended it before you go, we can... but you don't get to tell me that it's for my own good. If you want to be _fair_ , then that's how you do it – make your own choices instead of trying to make mine."

"I'm not trying to... god, Silverbolt!" Skyfire ran a hand distractedly through his hair, leaving it ruffled and a little crazy-looking and absolutely adorable, and why the hell were they arguing when they had so little time in the first place? "It's not like I _want_ you to, to find someone else, okay? It's just, I'd understand if you _did_ \--"

Silverbolt didn't know exactly what expression was on his face, but it stopped Skyfire cold.

"You should go," said Silverbolt quietly into the strained silence. "We can talk about this tomorrow."

Skyfire ducked his head, nodded once, and moved to collect his jacket from the table by the door. Silverbolt watched him put his shoes on, watched him withdraw deeper into himself, and his heart ached like a hole had been torn in it. The words burst out without conscious direction, angry and hurt and confused.

"Why can't you believe that I want to wait for you?"

The instant he said it, he wanted to take it back – he didn't need to see the raw, stricken look on Skyfire's face to know that he'd hit home and hit hard. Then Skyfire closed up completely, face going distant and cold.

"Goodnight," was all he said, hitting the door controls and stalking out into the corridor.

Silverbolt stood where he was, looking at the closed door like an idiot – or like he was expecting Skyfire come back – until Fireflight, very quietly, came out of Air Raid's room, across the lounge, and put his arms around him.

"It's okay," Silverbolt said, not really believing it. "It's just... a thing. It'll be okay."

"I know," said Fireflight – and _he_ sounded so much like he _did_ believe it that some of Silverbolt's unhappiness eased. "It's just a thing. It happens. Come and watch TV with us."

"What would I do without you?" Silverbolt murmured, hugging him back for a few seconds longer than could really be called casual.

"Well, you'd never see all of _Super Power Force Special-G_ , for one thing."

His heart still ached, but Silverbolt managed something like a laugh, and let Fireflight drag him into the den of blankets and cushions he and Air Raid had constructed on Air Raid's bed, and let them wrap him up with inane superhero shows and unspoken sympathy.

He even began to feel a little better, until it occurred to him that there was no-one to do this for Skyfire.

* * *

Silverbolt turned over onto his other side for the fourth time in half an hour. He knew, logically, that his bed hadn't changed since the night before, or the night before that, but he just couldn't get comfortable. The mattress seemed too hard or too lumpy no matter how he arranged himself, he couldn't get the pillows to fit his neck right, the quilt was too hot and then not warm enough...

He rolled over onto his front and buried his face miserably in the pillow. His phone was lying on the bedside table within easy reach. He wanted to call Skyfire so badly it was like an ache in the back of his throat. But quite apart from the fact that it was three in the morning, Silverbolt knew that wasn't the answer, not really. No matter how much he wanted to call Skyfire up and apologise, say whatever was needed to smooth things over, in the end it would all come up again. They had to work this out, or Silverbolt couldn't see where they would go from here.

The thought made his eyes sting. He rolled onto his back and scrubbed a hand fiercely across them, trying not to think about the clock display, and how exhausted he was going to be in the morning. Even Skydive must be asleep by now. Three in the morning was a terribly lonely time.

Just as he decided to get up and make himself a drink in the kitchen, his cell beeped to indicate a message received. Silverbolt's heart jolted and he forced himself to take a deep breath before he reached for the phone. It could be anything – maybe Skydive wasn't asleep, or maybe it was Hot Spot, currently on the other side of the world – he shouldn't get his hopes--

Skyfire's name glowed on the screen under the new message icon. Silverbolt swallowed hard and hit the key to open the message.

_Are you awake?_

Silverbolt hesitated for a moment.

_yes_

_Can I come over?_

Silverbolt wanted to say yes, wanted Skyfire in his arms and Skyfire's heartbeat against his, but...

He braced himself and dialled Skyfire directly, rolling onto his back to stare at the ceiling as he held the cell to his ear.

Skyfire picked up on the second ring.

"Hi."

"Hey." Silverbolt had meant to be firm, to say _I don't think it's a good idea_ and _we need to talk about this properly but not at half three in the morning_ , but Skyfire sounded as miserable with that one word as Silverbolt felt, and his resolve crumbled. "Are you okay?"

"Not really." Skyfire's voice was very quiet, even though there was no-one at his end to wake up. "I can't sleep, I've been thinking..."

He trailed off, and Silverbolt had just decided he wasn't going to carry on, when Skyfire said, "I'm sorry."

Silverbolt closed his eyes and bit his lip. Was that enough? He didn't think so. There was just too much riding on this and if he couldn't make Skyfire understand...

But Skyfire wasn't done.

"I don't want to go," he said, with devastating simplicity. "I've always... I've never felt that way before. I usually look forward to it, but this time... if I were going next year, instead of next month, it would be different, but..."

He stopped to take a breath, and Silverbolt found that he was gripping his phone so tight his fingers hurt.

"I don't want to go," Skyfire said again. "I would give anything not to go. I'm going to miss you so much and I just..."

He trailed off, either running out of words or wanting a response from Silverbolt. It took Silverbolt two tries to speak; his throat had dried up completely.

"I don't want you to go either," he managed at last, and the admission was like something breaking open inside him, letting loose a flood of emotion he'd been trying to pen up, pretending he was okay with Skyfire leaving, pretending it wasn't a big deal. And this wasn't what they had been arguing about and it wasn't what he'd thought they needed to say to each other, but at the same time, it completely was. "I... I'm trying not to think about it, but sometimes I do and I almost can't bear it..."

For a split second he was afraid that Skyfire would respond to that by telling him he didn't have to, that Skyfire would _understand_ if... but whatever was going through Skyfire's head seemed to have left him as broken open and honest as Silverbolt was feeling just then. His voice shook when he spoke again.

"Tell me you'll be waiting?"

"Yes," Silverbolt whispered, curling up on his side around the cell he held cradled to his ear. His eyes were wet. "Of course I will. I promise I will. I love you and I don't want you to go and I'm going to count _seconds_ until you're back. I'll say it as often as you need to hear it if _you'll_ promise _me_ that you'll try to believe it."

"Okay," said Skyfire, voice cracking but finally, _finally_ sounding like he meant it. "I promise."

Silverbolt nodded, knowing that Skyfire couldn't see, but for a moment he couldn't find words to reply. He felt drained, but the terrible coiled up misery in his heart had finally eased. It was going to be okay. It was going to be okay, they could do this. And now they had both had entirely too much emotional drama for one night, and they should really just go to sleep in their separate beds and sort the rest out later.

They really should.

"Can I come over?" Silverbolt asked.

"Yes. Please."

"I'll see you in a minute then." Silverbolt glanced at the clock and tried not to think too hard about the fact that it was now close to four, or that he had three reports he needed to work on at the start of his shift. Thank Primus he wasn't flying anywhere today. "I love you."

"I love you too." Skyfire paused, and then added in a low tone, "Hurry up and get here. I want to kiss you."

Silverbolt swung his legs over the side of the bed and felt for the light switch, heart hammering with anticipation and relief.

"I'm on my way."


	3. Chapter 3

It was a perfect day for a launch. They couldn't have asked for better weather, or better intel regarding Decepticon activity (specifically, there was none). It was only when Silverbolt caught himself frowning every time someone on the radio confirmed yet another positive reading that he realised there had been a part of him still clinging to the stupid idea that the mission might be cancelled at the last minute.

He sighed, and forced himself to put those feelings away as he went through his own pre-flight checks. They _really_ needed this mission to work out. The energy crisis was worsening by the day, and investing fuel in a deep-space launch was a huge gamble that would only pay off if Skyfire and Perceptor were right about the exact components of the massive gas cloud that surrounded the outer reaches of the Cybertron system. Silverbolt privately had no doubt at all that Skyfire _was_ right, and that his plan to distil energy from the band was sound, but Skyfire had to get out there and _try_ it before they could start celebrating.

At least the advances in spaceflight since the start of the war meant it was 'only' a six month round trip. When Skyfire had first gained his pilot's license, Silverbolt knew, it would have been more like six _years_. He tried not to imagine that scenario. He was already missing Skyfire fiercely, and he hadn't even left yet.

Skyfire had spent the previous night in the shuttle, as was standard policy, sealed off from the world. He'd spent the night before _that_ in Silverbolt's arms. Neither of them had slept much, but they hadn't really talked, either. They seemed to have reached a point where they had said what needed to be said. Silence and each other had been all they'd needed.

"All systems ready," came Skyfire's voice over the radio.

"Acknowledged," Prowl replied from the control tower. "Silverbolt, is your team prepped?"

"Yes," Silverbolt said. "We're ready." 

He didn't need to radio the others. Their readiness was clear over the gestalt link, which was, of course, the point of the thing, although the people who'd initiated the project apparently hadn't realised that other emotions would have a tendency to bleed through as well. The others were doing their best not to feel too loudly at him (as Fireflight always put it) but they were all unhappy today, to one degree or another.

"Red Alert, what's your status?" Prowl went on.

"Ready to disengage perimeter defence on your mark," came the clipped response.

"Copy that." A pause, perhaps for Prowl to confer with Optimus off-mike. Then, "Silverbolt, take your team out and maintain holding pattern."

"Copy that."

Silverbolt started his fighter moving forward, a wordless pulse over the gestalt link prompting his brothers to do the same. A few seconds later, they were out of their hangar and in the air. The sky was a glorious blue. It really was a perfect day for flying.

"Skyfire, on my mark..."

The shuttle joined them a few minutes later, falling easily into its preassigned spot in their formation. Skyfire wasn't a part of their gestalt, but he'd been flying with them for almost two years now, and knew them well.

 _Why did we wait so long to... start this?_ Silverbolt thought despite his best efforts, feeling a little jolt of misery. He knew the answer, of course. Because they'd both been so busy, so totally consumed by their roles in the Autobot army, that the whole falling in love thing had happened gradually and without fanfare, and been utterly irrevocable before they'd ever even thought of kissing.

A flicker of compassion and sympathy from his brothers reminded him that he was on the clock. He pushed his emotions down and concentrated on flying. He used verbal commands for Skyfire's benefit, and tried not to linger on the sound of Skyfire's voice every time he acknowledged.

All too soon, they reached the edge of Autobot airspace. Silverbolt had been braced to defend the shuttle if necessary, but Jazz hadn't been wrong: there were no Decepticons in the sky today.

"Preparing to engage primary thrust," Skyfire said, which was Silverbolt's cue to get his team out of the way.

"Fly safely," was all he permitted himself to say over the radio.

"I will," Skyfire said. Then, back to formality, "Engaging."

The shuttle's thrusters burned blindingly white even through Silverbolt's tinted cockpit, and the big, white craft seemed to leap forward, then curve upwards like a rocket. In seconds it was almost out of sight as it cut through the atmosphere like a dolphin through the waves, heading for the black of space.

"Good luck," Silverbolt whispered, knowing Skyfire was already beyond radio range. "Come back safely."

* * *

There was something soothing about space, Skyfire had always found. He'd never suffered from the claustrophobia that some pilots experienced on long voyages. From the moment he'd first taken a shuttle out of atmosphere, he'd loved the silence, the stillness, and the stars.

It didn't mitigate the deep ache of leaving Silverbolt behind, or the basic loneliness of having no company but his own, but at least it was familiar, and he knew he would adjust.

At least he could send the occasional message, and receive replies from Silverbolt. No live feed, of course, not at this distance, not even video or audio. He had to be careful not to draw Decepticon attention, so all messages were encoded text only, bundled in with the periodic status reports that were sent back to Cybertron. They had debated for a long time – him, Optimus, Prowl, and Jazz – whether to run the mission completely silent to minimize the risk of detection. He was glad that in the end they'd decided the need for pseudo-realtime updates was paramount.

It was oddly old-fashioned, writing to Silverbolt. Like sending letters in the days when sailing ships had crossed the seas of Cybertron, before instantaneous communication had become the norm. There was a unique kind of pleasure in it, and even though Skyfire missed hearing his voice and seeing his face, he found the joy of reading Silverbolt's replies was something special in its own right.

He said as much to Silverbolt, who answered that he knew what Skyfire meant, and alone in space, Skyfire smiled, and if after that sometimes his messages could more correctly be termed love letters, well... Silverbolt wasn't complaining.

* * *

"He must be almost there by now," Air Raid said.

"Hmm?" Silverbolt had to drag his thoughts away from the book he'd been immersed in. "What?"

"Skyfire. He must be almost there, right?"

"You know I can't tell you that."

"Yeah, yeah, top secret mission details, whatever. Skydive figured out how long it would take to get to the cloud belt in a Valkyrie. So he should be almost there, right?"

Silverbolt sighed. "Seriously, 'top secret' means I can't even say yes or no or maybe, okay?"

"Oh, fine." Air Raid grabbed the TV remote and flipped to some awful reality show or other. "But anyway, the point is, after that he'll be heading home, instead of away."

"Yes," Silverbolt said, deciding the acknowledgement wasn't too big a security risk. "Now shut up and let me read."

* * *

Other systems had multiple planets, gas giants and rocky worlds and dozens of moons orbiting larger partners. Cybertron's system had only Cybertron. There was something very odd about that, astronomically speaking, but no-one had solved the mystery yet. There was a part of Skyfire that hoped the answer might lie in the gas belt, that he might contribute even more to science with this mission than proving the belt was a viable source of energy.

But that was more daydream than reality, and now as he drew close to his goal, it was time to start work on the instruments and get ready to test the net-like filter he had designed to siphon energy from the cloud.

He wished Silverbolt was here even more than usual. Not just because he wanted to see him, but because he wanted to _show_ him this... the bright white stars, and the faint iridescence of the shields that protected the shuttle from micrometeor impacts, and the way the filter spread out from the shuttle like a sail two miles across, so fine it was barely visible, catching the starlight with the occasional frosty twinkle.

The first readings began to come in. Skyfire watched the logs, adjusted the sail, and felt what had been merely conjecture solidify into certainty as the numbers began to show exactly the results he'd predicted, felt for the first time a moment of brilliant, shining _hope_ that the desperate war over resources could be brought to an end not in fifteen or twenty years, but in five, or three, or even one...

And then there was noise, terrible, loud, tearing explosions where there should have been only the silence of the void, and he was falling, where he should have been unable to fall, and the stars were lost behind flames that should have found no foothold to burn.

* * *

"What does that mean?" Silverbolt asked, very calm. 

He had to be very calm, right now, here in Optimus's office; he was Air Commander and leader of the Aerial gestalt and he absolutely could not allow himself to feel the fear that had sprung up in him when Optimus had broken the news that Skyfire had not made contact as scheduled.

"We're not sure," Perceptor said. He was very calm as well, very calm except for the lines of stress around his mouth, and the way he couldn't meet Silverbolt's eyes. "It could mean a minor problem with the communications array, that's all. Or some sort of interference. If it's either of those, he'll fix it as soon as he can and send a manual blip to let us know he's all right."

Silverbolt swallowed. "And if it isn't either of those?"

"Then we will have to wait, and hope," Optimus said quietly. "We have contingencies for this sort of event--"

"I know," Silverbolt said, too quickly, almost cutting Optimus off. He took a breath for balance. "If he can't make contact, he'll continue as planned. We'll have to start sweeping for his approach in about three, four months, right? Until then, we can't do anything."

"That is correct," Optimus said. "Silverbolt, if you would like to take the rest of the shift off--"

"No." That was the second time he'd interrupted his commander, but Optimus only looked concerned, not irritated. "I'd rather carry on as normal, thank you."

"As you wish."

Silverbolt stood up to leave, hesitated, just for a moment unable to keep up the facade.

"You'll... tell me straight away if you hear anything...?"

"Of course," Optimus said.

Silverbolt nodded, and, still very calm, went back to the reports that needed his attention, and the patrols that needed planning, and told himself that it was too soon to panic, too soon to be afraid, any number of small things could break the line of communication, it didn't mean...

… it didn't mean...

It didn't. He had to hold on to that.


	4. Chapter 4

There had been several things in Skyfire's life so far that he could have labelled his worst experience ever, but forcing his own broken leg back into alignment was probably going to hold the top spot for some time to come. It had been a week, and he still kept remembering the sensation and breaking out in a cold sweat. On top of that was the grim awareness that he'd done the best he could to set the bone, but that it was almost certainly going to heal wrong without professional medical attention.

In the meantime he'd turned the gravity down low enough that he could move around without putting weight on it, and he was rationing his strong painkillers carefully. Not that he could afford to use them very often anyway: he needed to be at full mental capacity to deal with his current situation.

And his current situation was... not good.

He was still trying to figure out exactly what had happened. Something to do with the filter net, the power generators, the siphons... some sort of mass reaction had occurred, creating enough oxygen to burn, enough force to temporarily override the artificial gravity – he had that to thank for the broken leg – and enough concussive damage to wreck half the equipment on the shuttle.

In a way, he'd been incredibly lucky. The secondary life support system had kicked in, and was running smoothly. The solar power cells were getting enough light, even at this distance from the sun, to run all the basic functions of the ship. But the comms were dead, and the engines... whatever had happened, every drop of fuel had been drained from the thrusters.

He was dead in the water, drifting in deep space with no means of calling for help. The shuttle had enough supplies for, oh, maybe two years, if he was careful... but what good would two years do him, if he couldn't move, and no-one could come and find him?

It would almost have been better if he'd died in the explosion...

But then he thought of Silverbolt, thought of his face the night before he'd left, imagined the look in his eyes if Skyfire never came back...

He could do a lot in two years. And the sooner he started to look for a way to get home, the sooner he might find it.

* * *

Silverbolt hadn't realised he could hate any set of words quite so much as he was learning to hate, "Are you okay?"

The phrase was now completely banned among the Aerials, mostly because when he'd finally snapped it had been at _Fireflight_ , of all people, and the resulting guilt and misery had echoed around between them for days, until all his brothers apparently made a silent pact that they were never, ever going to ask him that question again, or at least not for a very long time.

Hot Spot stopped after Silverbolt replied with a tirade of icy sarcasm that almost put a dent in their friendship (something the gestalt programme and the war had both failed to do so far). Fortunately Hot Spot wasn't the kind to hold grudges, and also had known Silverbolt since they were eleven, so didn't need a gestalt link to understand what was going on in his head.

Other people didn't get the hint, so Silverbolt started avoiding them as much as possible outside official interactions. His brothers noticed. They didn't say anything, but they didn't have to. He shut out as much of their worry as he could, and tried to bury himself in work.

One night when he'd stayed as late as he could in his office, he couldn't face going back to his quarters either, and he found himself wandering down to Skyfire's lab. His feet took him there almost automatically. When he realised where he was, his stomach dropped, but at the same time, he reached for the code pad like it might be a lifeline.

He wasn't expecting to find the lights on. Or for Perceptor to be sitting quietly at one of the benches, prodding an electronic circuit with about as much enthusiasm as Silverbolt had been doing paperwork. He jumped, when the door opened, turned quickly to look, and Silverbolt felt himself flush, fumbling for an excuse...

Then their eyes met and he realised he didn't need one.

After that he ended up spending quite a bit of time with Perceptor, who neither felt the need to ask if he was okay, nor reassure him that Skyfire would be fine. Perceptor knew far too much about the dangers of deep space to make such empty promises.

He did say, once, "I am not a betting man, but if you gave me odds on Skyfire versus the universe, I believe I would back Skyfire."

Silverbolt nodded. But they both knew how long those odds would be.

* * *

The comms were dead, dead, dead, and Skyfire had no chance of repairing them, but he still wrote letters to Silverbolt. Told him what he'd figured out so far, about the explosion and the shuttle's remaining functions. Ranted about the frustration of carefully disassembling some components only to realise they were damaged beyond repair. Explained in detail how astronomically unlikely it was for the comms to have been so utterly destroyed. Talked a little about the stars, now spinning past as the shuttle tumbled endlessly and without direction, and about the glimmers of light he sometimes saw from what must be the filter net still streaming out from the shuttle. He told himself it was helping to clarify his ideas, keep a log of his situation, and that it didn't matter if he was talking to someone who couldn't hear him.

Which didn't really excuse the parts of the letters that... dissolved into words and wishes almost too private and passionate to bear. Things like, _I want to touch you, I want to kiss you, I can't sleep for thinking about holding you, making love to you..._

_I'm more scared of never seeing you again than I am of dying._

He kept writing, and he kept working, and the stars continued to spin.

* * *

Silverbolt didn't need the calendar reminders; the outline of Skyfire's itinerary was etched into his mind and he knew exactly when they reached the point where the shuttle should be approaching Cybertron.

He checked the long-range scans so often it was almost like an addiction. He had to stop himself, or he'd have done nothing but stare at lines of code and text all day, waiting for the blip that would mean an incoming craft. In the end he and Perceptor made a pact to each check once a day. Silverbolt immediately broke it, but he was pretty sure Perceptor did, too, so he tried not to feel too guilty.

Nothing came.

Silverbolt spent a lot of late nights reading through the logs of other craft that had gone missing, looking for a sliver of hope. It wasn't unheard-of for them to return, he learned, even after so long they'd been given up for good. Short-range shuttles, ships that had been to the asteroid belts... many of them had come back.

But more of them hadn't.

And so few ships had ever been out as far as Skyfire was going... and of those, all had either returned on schedule or not at all. There seemed to be no middle ground.

He learned more about the Valkyrie class shuttles than most people who'd piloted them – though not, he was sure, more than Skyfire. They were robust ships, built for deep space. Everything in them was double, triple reinforced, redundancies built into redundancies. It should be possible to survive even direct damage, should be possible to rewire and reroute as necessary...

… should be possible to get the comms working again, unless the whole system had somehow been ripped to shreds. Which shouldn't happen – couldn't happen – not unless the shuttle itself had disintegrated...

After that, reading about space flight and shuttles went on the list of things he Wasn't Allowed To Do. It was getting longer than he would have liked.

He didn't realise until it arrived that he had been waiting for the week Skyfire was supposed to return. Didn't realise until he was sinking further and further into black despair, waiting each day for impossible news, until he had to quietly request some leave because he couldn't function with every spare part of his mind bent on somehow willing Skyfire back to him.

He hid in his room to start with, but his brothers were ever-present, worried, grieving in their own right, hopeful and desperate and in pain. So he signed out a car and drove for hours and miles away from the base, until he reached the coast, where the waves crashed endlessly on tall cliffs, and the sea birds dived and wailed, and he could cry without inflicting his misery on anyone else.

And then finally, the week was over.

Skyfire hadn't come back.

No-one asked if Silverbolt was okay this time. The answer was too obvious. But he went back on duty, despite offers to take more time if he needed it, and with no deadline now, no point in time to aim for, the heavy grey hopelessness almost made it easier to push his grief down and carry on.


	5. Chapter 5

There was a statistic that got tossed around in popular culture: as soon as you step out of an airlock your chances of dying in space rise to one in three. Skyfire knew it was a wild exaggeration, but he'd never tried to calculate the real figure. Still, the truth was that leaving a spacecraft pushed you far enough along the probability curve of risk that it was never a choice to be made lightly.

And that was based on the assumption that there was someone else out there with you, and a third person (or more) back in the ship to monitor your status and feed you information about any systems you were trying to patch. A spacewalk without a buddy was to be done only in the most extreme circumstances: going out with no-one on the ship, completely alone in the black of space, was very nearly suicide.

Skyfire was currently doing it every day. He'd almost stopped finding it utterly terrifying, except he didn't dare let himself forget the fear, because that was how you slipped and ended up dead. He had no idea how many more spacewalks he had ahead of him, only that progress was painfully slow.

It hadn't taken him more than six weeks to realise that the energy filter and siphon, for all they'd caused the problem in the first place, might be his best hope of getting home. But realising it wasn't the same as acting on it... not with his leg still weeks or months away from healing enough to put on a spacesuit... and not unless he was sure, absolutely sure, that there was no other option.

After four months, about when he should have been returning to Cybertron, he was sure. And so he started work, one spacewalk at a time, hour after hour, day after day, slowly patching together wiring and conduits and tiny pieces of hope. There was no-one to tell him what the ship's systems were doing as he worked, so sometimes, he'd get back inside, and realise he needed to spend the next excursion undoing everything he'd just done.

He thought he understood the reaction that had caused the explosion now, but he had no lab to test it, no models to run. Even if he could fix the siphon, he didn't know if turning it on would just flat out kill him.

It was like building a boat out of matches in the middle of a thunderstorm on top of a haystack soaked in gasoline.

He thought of Silverbolt, and put the spacesuit back on, and went out into the darkness to lay down another match.

* * *

It was towards the end of the year that they started having problems with Autobot air space. The Decepticons' push to take Praxus was as brutal as it was unexpected, and the fallout was far-reaching. The first time Silverbolt's team were scrambled to intercept an unknown aircraft, his heart was pounding so hard he thought it would deafen him, hope rising like a terrible tide that tasted more of desperation than of joy.

But when they made visual contact, it was a tiny civilian jet with a crew of terrified refugees begging for sanctuary on their barely functioning comms. He led the retrieval successfully, got his team back on the ground, attended the debriefing, finished his shift.

Locked himself in his room and cried for an hour straight.

Then carried on.

After a while it became more routine. There would be weeks where not a shift seemed to go by without the order to intercept. Silverbolt's paperwork load expanded like insulation foam as he rushed to keep track of everything, all the retrievals, all the air-worthy craft that might be used against the Decepticons. He didn't even catch his breath when the call came through now.

Then they intercepted a Valkyrie, beautifully white, absolutely silent on comms, branded with no insignia at all. It couldn't be Skyfire, his wings had proudly borne bright red blazons like all the Autobot fleet, it couldn't be, and yet...

And yet Silverbolt's heart seemed to stop when Prowl gave the order to shoot it down as it barrelled at full speed towards the heart of Autobot territory.

He obeyed. He had to. And then he took his team back to base, fled from their worried questions, and locked himself in his office on the pretext of doing paperwork. He spent the afternoon waiting for a call, one that would contain the words, "regret to inform you" and "unfortunate incident of misidentification" and "acted according to protocol".

Finally, the retrieval squad reported in from the wreckage of the Valkyrie. They found no bodies, only an intricate Decepticon bomb linked to the autopilot, a payload big enough to take out half of the Autobot headquarters if the shuttle had landed there. 

Prowl had made the right call. Something tight and terrible in Silverbolt's chest began to relaxed, and to his intense frustration, the tears came with it.

He wondered when it would start to hurt less. He was starting to be afraid the answer was _never_.

And maybe the worst part was, he still couldn't give up hope.

* * *

"Are you sure? Not even dinner?" Fireflight asked, and there was a note of pleading in his voice. "Not even takeout and movies, just the five of us?"

Silverbolt wanted to say, _it's MY birthday, don't I get to do what I want, even if that's nothing?_ But he stopped himself. It was his birthday, but maybe it wasn't entirely his choice, at least this year.

"Okay, fine," he said. "I want to go somewhere off base. To... to the sea. With a picnic. Just the five of us. Is that okay?"

He was afraid his voice was too harsh, or the suggestion too meagre, but Fireflight absolutely _beamed_ , promised him the best picnic ever, and rushed off with such enthusiasm that Silverbolt's own reluctance faded a little.

Why shouldn't he celebrate his birthday? Apart from the fact that it made him think painfully of this time last year... when his brothers had insisted on throwing him a party, despite his protests, except he hadn't protested _too_ hard, because they'd invited Skyfire, and the unspoken, glowing, soft warmth between them was becoming impossible to ignore...

They'd slipped away from the party together, sat out under the stars, talked until the sky went light with dawn. Silverbolt had made up his mind to kiss Skyfire when the sun rose, except he'd fallen asleep against Skyfire's shoulder, and been woken unceremoniously by Air Raid and Slingshot coming to look for him, and the chance had passed...

… and then Optimus had proposed the deep space mission...

Maybe it wasn't so strange he didn't want to celebrate his birthday this year. But he went with his brothers to the sea anyway, and he'd expected it to be melancholy, but the crashing waves and crying gulls took on a friendlier note when Fireflight was being dragged squawking into the surf by a cackling Air Raid, and in the end, he was glad he'd said yes.

* * *

Skyfire's calendar, pre-loaded on the shuttle's computer, dutifully reminded him of events and dates he had no way of honouring. He'd thought of turning it off, but he felt like he needed the grounding, too, the reminder of the life that was waiting for him away from this cocoon in space. He decided to take the day off on his own birthday, but quickly found he couldn't settle, needed to keep busy. By contrast, when the computer told him it was Silverbolt's birthday (as if he could have forgotten), he found himself unable to concentrate, unable to think of anything but beloved stars fading into the pale blue of a new day, and Silverbolt asleep almost in his arms, and things he should have done much, much sooner...

But of all of them, it was Fireflight's birthday that hit him the hardest, and the days after, when he could no longer deny that he had been away from Cybertron for almost a full year, and he still didn't know if he could even get back, and all he could think of was Silverbolt, of kissing him, giving up the battle with his own stubborn nature, and of all he'd won by doing it...

And all he'd lost, by leaving...

He deliberately didn't have the calendar remind him of the anniversary of the launch, but he couldn't avoid remembering, even so, as the days trickled by.

And then the universe gave him a gift, a tiny gift of hope and promise, when he gingerly tested a portion of the filter system, and saw his fuel tank indicators suddenly leap from their zero state. The prototype he'd designed, and now rebuilt, drew energy from the invisible cloud of particles around him, like the sails of a ship slowly filling with wind after months of calm. He hardly dared breathe. And he hardly dared hope. And yet he thought, as if his thoughts could reach Silverbolt, _this is it, I'm coming home._


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY, TWO UPDATES IN ONE DAY, justteaforme made me do it.

Silverbolt and Perceptor still checked the long range scans daily. There had been a handful of blips, over the year and more that Skyfire had been gone. Comets, space debris, once a drifting wreck of a bulk cruiser from before the war. Others that were never positively identified. None with an Autobot transponder code, none with the right profile for a Valkyrie.

The one Silverbolt spotted at the end of a long shift with too many hard choices – the refugees were still coming fast from Praxus, and so were the infiltrators, the saboteurs, and the occasional bomb – almost wasn't worth checking. No transponder, coming from the wrong quarter, the profile was all wrong, the spectral lines off... He called Perceptor anyway. They pored over the data and agreed sadly that it was probably space junk, or maybe a dying comet, with the last remains of its tail hanging behind it.

And yet it... stuck in Silverbolt's mind, somehow.

* * *

This wasn't what Skyfire would call _flying_ , exactly. It was more like trying to guide a sulking hippopotamus in a straight line with only a bridle made of spider's silk. Fortunately space was very big, and the weaving and wandering path he bullied the shuttle into wasn't going to cause any problems until he was much closer to Cybertron.

… day by day, he was _getting_ much closer to Cybertron.

It was almost harder than being out on the edge of the system had been. Seeing home getting closer – so slowly, but so steadily – spending hours and hours on alert for the slightest malfunction, the slightest error in his course – calculating and recalculating his speed, his heading, how long it was going to take...

Another month? Two? And then he'd have to deal with all the implications of entering atmosphere... the long-range comms were destroyed, his transponder was dead, and he didn't like the look of the readings he was getting from the jury-rigged navigational system. It was managing while he was in vacuum, but he was afraid it would collapse like a house of cards as soon as he broke atmosphere. And if it did, even his short-range radio would go, and he'd have no way of calling for help.

That was assuming he could even manage to make planetfall within Autobot territory. If he came in over Decepticon borders... he had no shields, no way of manoeuvring if attacked, no way even of surrendering. He could get so close to home, and so many things could go wrong... but all he could do was keep flying – or steering the hippopotamus – and try to think of as many solutions to as many problems in advance as he could.

* * *

"Do you have visual contact yet, Silverbolt?"

"Negative." Silverbolt throttled back just a little, holding position with the rest of his wing. "Skydive, anything on long-range?"

"No transponder signal," Skydive replied. "Not even a blip. Whoever he is, he isn't one of ours."

"But no Decepticon signal either?"

"No. Could be a neutral."

"They've ignored two warnings that they've entered our airspace," said Prowl over the radio. "Be prepared to treat as hostile."

"Acknowledged. We'll be in range any second now--"

"I see him," said Slingshot. A frown was in his voice. "Coming in fast, but it looks almost like..."

"Silverbolt!" Fireflight said urgently.

"I know." Silverbolt could see the incoming craft now, see its familiar shape and the faint streaks of white beneath carbon scoring and micrometeor damage, and his heart leapt and pounded painfully. "Control, it's a Valkyrie class shuttle. Can't see any insignia, it's almost black with fire damage."

They hadn't seen a Valkyrie since that first time... the one that had been rigged to explode. He'd hoped he'd never see one again, to be honest. And yet... where there had been no good reason to believe the other shuttle could be Skyfire's, this one... it wasn't coming from the direction of Praxus, and any Autobot blazons would be hidden under the black that coated its wings... 

The first time, he'd known, in his heart of hearts, that it couldn't be him, even as his grief made him fear it. This time... he remembered that reading on the scanner, months ago now...

This time hope was suddenly bright, tight and painful in his throat.

"Continue to assume hostile until you can get some kind of response on the radio," Prowl said. "We can't allow an unidentified craft within our perimeter."

"Sir," Silverbolt said, struggling to keep his voice even, "could it be Skyfire?"

They were nearer now, near enough that he could see clearly how badly damaged the shuttle was. He was amazed it had survived re-entry, and a sick fear twisted in his stomach when he saw with what difficulty its pilot was keeping it on its course. The shuttle kept yawing this way and that, suffering damaged flaps and fins no doubt, and it was only with constant, painstaking corrections that it was staying in the air. He could hear Skydive making repeated attempts to contact the other craft; he wasn't getting so much as static in response.

"You'd have picked up a code by now if it were him," Prowl replied after a pause.

"The transmitter could be offline--" began Skydive.

"Not unless the whole guidance and atmospheric flight system were also down," Silverbolt said reluctantly. He knew a lot about Valkyries these days. "And I doubt he'd have got into the atmosphere if they were."

"They might've gone after re-entry," put in Air Raid. "He's in a bad way, control. I don't think he can get down on his own."

"If it _is_ Skyfire..." Fireflight started urgently.

"If it were Skyfire," Prowl said, "he would know better than to come in straight for our perimeter like this, with no identification and no forewarning. He knows procedure. Silverbolt, if you don't get a response within the next three minutes, you have to assume that this is a covert attack, and deal with it accordingly."

"But that's just it," Fireflight persisted, "I don't think he's got a choice – his thrusters don't look like they're firing more than ten percent and his wings are terribly damaged – and I don't suppose he can do much in the way of manoeuvring..."

"Anyone else getting weird readings on his vapour trail?" interrupted Air Raid. "Or is my sensor array glitching again?" 

Silverbolt pulled up his own diagnostics, and saw what Air Raid meant immediately. There were spikes in several elements that would normally only be trace in a shuttle's emissions, including at least one that Silverbolt knew could only be found under certain very specific conditions.

Heart in his mouth, Silverbolt ran a more detailed diagnostic, all too aware of time ticking past. It gave him the same answer; too specific a result to be coincidence.

"It has to be Skyfire," he said, only the barest of tremors in his voice. "He's used... he's used the particle net, to siphon energy from the outer system cloud-- it's the prototype he was testing, he's used it to refuel somehow--"

"Silverbolt," came Prowl, sympathetic but stern, "we can't take that chance, not without positive identification--"

"Silverbolt." Optimus Prime cut smoothly through Prowl's words. "Are you sure?"

Silverbolt swallowed hard, looked at the shuttle off his wing, tried to see any hint of insignia beneath the grime that had turned its pristine plating black. He was all too aware of how much he _wanted_ it to be Skyfire in there, how hope had swelled up in his throat so that they almost choked him. He tried to push his own desperation to the back of his mind, ignored his brothers' urgent talk, focused on objectivity.

"I'm not getting any system readings at all," Skydive put in over the others. "No guidance, no transmitters, nothing. He's flying that thing completely on manual."

"I'm sure," Silverbolt said to Optimus. "There isn't one pilot in a thousand that could fly a Valkyrie like that."

"Very well. Bring him in. If he doesn't have working guidance systems, he'll need to be led down. I'll have Inferno's squad standing by."

"Optimus, sir," Prowl began quietly, but fell silent, perhaps at some gesture that Silverbolt couldn't see.

"Understood," Silverbolt replied, so caught between relief and anxiety that he thought he'd come apart under the pressure. "We're bringing him in."

He drew smoothly ahead of the shuttle, set in the course for the base landing bays, and watched as the pilot – Skyfire, it had to be Skyfire, didn't it? – corrected to follow him down.

"I just hope he can land that thing," muttered Slingshot. 

Silverbolt bit his lip, seeing the shuttle sideslip and correct, again and again, using flaps and ailerons and brute force to take the place of the complex systems that should have been keeping it in the air. He held on his course, and began silently to pray to gods he didn't entirely believe in.

* * *

The shuttle didn't exactly crash, but it couldn't really be called a smooth landing either; one wing crumpled and the fuselage skidded along the landing pad, throwing up sparks. Inferno's team were ready with foam and inertia buffers, and as far as Silverbolt could tell, no fire broke out.

"Bring your squad in," was all the instruction they received from control.

Silverbolt's hands were shaking as he popped the canopy, unbuckled himself from his seat, pulled his helmet off. No word on the comms, nothing about the shuttle – he'd seen it get down in one piece – but had he been right to trust his instinct, had he endangered them all? He started on the post-flight routines, missed a step, cursed, began again from the beginning...

"Silverbolt!" Air Raid, standing on the edge of his cockpit. "Go on, go!"

"I can't, I need to--"

"I'll do yours for you – go!"

Silverbolt hauled himself out of his cockpit, scrambled down to the hangar floor, cast one grateful look at Air Raid, and sprinted for the door. Someone shouted a question at him but he ignored it, tuned out everything as he flat-out ran down the corridors towards the landing bay. What if he'd been wrong? The certainty he'd felt with the shuttle on his wing had drained away – what if he'd only been _hoping_ – what if it was some neutral pilot in there, or worse, a Decepticon saboteur – or another bomb?

Just as he rounded the last corner he heard a cheer go up from beyond the hangar doors ahead. His heart lifted, but still ached with uncertainty – it might be some other Autobot thought lost, or, or...

The doors slid open. For a moment Silverbolt couldn't see anything except a mass of people crowded around the open hatch of the battered shuttle. What if...

Then he saw Skyfire. Skyfire who looked exhausted, exhilarated, and relieved all at once; who was far too thin, and pale, and leaning on a makeshift crutch; who was _there_ and _alive_ and Silverbolt wanted to laugh out loud and break down sobbing both at the same time.

Silverbolt stopped just inside the door, too overwhelmed to do anything but stand and stare, but Skyfire, looking from one to another of the crowd with smiles and glad words, caught sight of him, went completely still. They held each other's eyes across the hangar, and then Silverbolt started moving, and Skyfire was pushing past the other people as if he could barely see them, and Silverbolt threw dignity to the winds and _ran_ the last few steps into Skyfire's arms.

He dimly heard the clatter of Skyfire's crutch hitting the floor, didn't care, because Skyfire's arms were tight around him and they were clinging to each other like children, too overcome in those first seconds to do more than hold on hard and fast.

"Knew it was you," Silverbolt managed, voice rough, and Skyfire laughed shakily, and then they were kissing with a passion that Silverbolt, later, would be embarrassed to have displayed in public.

Just then he didn't care. Not when Skyfire's hands were wound tight into the material of his flight suit, when Skyfire's mouth was desperate on his, when Skyfire's body was warm and real in his arms. Didn't even care when he became dimly aware that they were getting a chorus of cheers and catcalls. Didn't care for anything except making absolutely, completely sure that Skyfire had defied the odds, had found his way home.


End file.
